“If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.”
0 likes
Author detail
Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, and several books of poetry, and was credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, prostitute, nightclub dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she earned the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Source: Wikipedia
Quotes
Showing 161-180 of 324
“If you're a human being, you can attempt to do what other human beings have done. We don't understand talent any more than we understand electricity.”
0 likes
“I don't think there's such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.”
0 likes
“Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first...”
0 likes
“That's the biggest gift I can give anybody: 'Wake up, be aware of who you are, what you're doing and what you can do to prevent yourself from becoming ill.'”
0 likes
“It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strang...”
0 likes
“Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hu...”
0 likes
“When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon - all served with black beans and rice. It's...”
0 likes
“I've never had a dislike for men. I've been badly treated by some. But I've been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.”
0 likes
“I think I have had so much blessing - I've had my brother, who was brilliant - I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother - Bailey was just all of that. He l...”
0 likes
“In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”
0 likes
“If we don't plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don't have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don't have to have an IQ of 150....”
0 likes
“I know that I'm not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don't know h...”
0 likes
“I love the song 'I Hope You Dance' by Lee Ann Womack. I was going to write that song, but someone beat me to it.”
0 likes
“I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.”
0 likes
“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”
0 likes
“I did work in a strip club, but I didn't strip. I danced, and I became very popular.”
0 likes
“I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.”
0 likes
“At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.”
0 likes
“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans - because we can. We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human be...”
0 likes
“Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things.”
0 likes